A remarkable story today about a man re-awoken from a six-year coma. After having electrodes inserted into his brain the 38-year-old American patient, who was left in a near-vegetative state after a horrific assault in 1999, can open his eyes and track people across the room. He can speak a few words and make intentional limb movements - the results were reported today in Nature.
But is it right to test experimental treatments on people who can't technically give their consent?
From the story:
"My son can now speak, watch a movie without falling asleep, drink from a cup, express pain, he can cry and laugh ... He can say 'I love you mum'. I still cry every time I see my son, but they're tears of joy," his mother said.
Doctors expect to see continuing improvements in his recovery.
Ali Rezai, a neurosurgeon at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, who led the team to place the electrodes, said: "When we first activated the pacemakers ... we looked at each other, the team humbled in many ways, but at the same time excited about the prospects and the potential of what can be done for these patients."
(You can hear science correspondent Ian Sample discussing the story here.)
The scientists in the Nature study do not suggest that deep brain stimulation cures people in a minimally conscious state but they did show that improvements can be made by patients even long after an injury.
Professor Tipu Aziz, a neurosurgeon at Oxford University, says: "The ethics of intervention in such patients is still very difficult...From a personal view point I would not be able to accept any interventions to prolong life in such a state. Much more needs to be done into the research of the best management of such patients."
An article by Gary Greenberg in Wired looked into the issue of using electricity to stimulate the brains of people in comas. After a thorough run-down of the area, he writes:
Accident victims fill emergency rooms, and it is hard to picture how much more tortuous our decisions will get if new truths about electrical stimulation displace old certainties about hopelessness.
There is plenty of promise in this treatment and no-one could blame a patient's parents, friends or loved ones for looking into anything that might help. But where should scientists draw the line? And if deep brain stimulation gets better at waking people up, even partially, what happens to the already morally-difficult decision of switching off life-support to patients in comas?
